


In Vino Far Too Much Veritas

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: heaven for the climate, but hell for the company [4]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Don't worry, you're just as sane as I am' are words to live by, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Far Too Much Veritas

           “But he  _doesn’t talk_ ,” Davy said, frustrated. “How can you have a relationship with someone who doesn’t talk? He just knifes things!”

 

            “Firstly,” Lorraine said, “he does talk. He talks to me. Secondly, he does not just knife things.”

 

            Lorraine, Claire decided, was easily the most sober person sitting at her kitchen table right now. Since Stephen was drinking faster than any of them and only just keeping up with Cara’s level of tipsiness, Lizzie and Lester were having their own more elegant drinks elsewhere, and Claire and Davy were matching each other Bloody Mary for Bloody Mary, Lorraine was possibly the only sober person at her kitchen table right now. There was a lot to be said for meeting up for a nice, comfortable, drunken bitching session about the boys while the boys were much too far away to hear a thing, but Lorraine’s semi-teetotalism was throwing a spanner in the works. She remained hilariously incapable of relaxing around people, and everyone else got increasingly hilariously incapable of dealing with her.

 

            Also, Davy had a point. Lorraine was impossible to understand. Anyone who willingly got into a relationship with Niall Richards and stayed there for longer than it took to appreciate the pretty was impossible to understand.

 

            “How do you have a relationship with someone who can’t spell his own name?” Lorraine pointed out.

 

            Claire flinched and wondered if Davy was going to take offence.

 

            “Diarmuid is difficult to spell, okay, it’s not Robbie’s fault his parents landed him with a shitty middle name,” Davy said with dignity, and closed one blue eye, the better to focus on Lorraine. Lorraine didn’t look like she was particularly offended, either, which was good: it meant there wasn’t going to be a fight in Claire’s kitchen. “How do you know how he does or doesn’t spell his name ananyway?”

 

            Davy didn’t appear to know that she’d added an extra syllable to ‘anyway’, and Claire wasn’t going to enlighten her. Especially as she didn’t think she’d be able to get the word ‘syllable’ out in a recognisable form.

 

            “I file their paperwork,” Lorraine said. The faint hint of deviousness in her voice was the only real sign that she’d had a large glass of red wine. “ _All their paperwork_.”

 

            “Miss Wickes knows everything,” Stephen said. His voice was solemn and not entirely steady, but his bright blue eyes were dancing wildly. “E. Ve. Ry. Thing.” He waved one long-fingered hand for emphasis.

 

            Cara curled up on her chair like a mischievous little imp and giggled, soft caramel-coloured hair half over her face. She looked about the same age as one of Claire’s sixth form students, which was distressing.

 

            “Not everything,” Lorraine objected, refilling her glass and Cara’s. “Just… _some_ things.”

 

            Davy harrumphed. “Claire, where’s the vodka?”

 

            Claire picked up the bottle and brandished it a bit. She came quite close to dropping it at several points, but at no time did she actually let it go.

 

            “Give that here, you’re too drunk to hang on to it,” Davy said, with gross hypocrisy. She giggled. “Go home, Claire, you are _drunk_.”

 

            “We’re in Claire’s house,” Cara said, voice rather slurred. “We should go home.”

 

            “No no no.” Claire was surprised to realise she was speaking, but that was definitely her voice. Her _really drunk_ voice. Her _Dave is about to pick me up, carry me upstairs and put me to bed with a bucket beside me and stroke my hair and laugh at me when I wake up hungover_ voice, except of course, Dave couldn’t do any of those things, because he was, in fact, elsewhere. Claire wasn’t allowed to know where.

 

            She only realised she’d stopped in the middle of a sentence when Cara practically climbed into her lap and wrapped her arms around Claire’s neck. “Don’t be sad, Claire. Don’t be sad,” she whispered, soft and sweet and delicate. Cara was never like that sober. She might look like it, but she acted like an unusually cuddly steel hawser.

 

            Claire felt her eyes aching with tears, and she pressed her face into Cara’s thin shoulders and hugged her back. Cara was tiny, but she always radiated warmth and comfort in a way Claire – who was definitely designed by nature to emanate warmth and comfort, what with the bouncy blonde hair and the squishy curves – could not. Then Stephen’s arms settled around her from behind, and she drew the line. If Stephen, who was as skittish as a day-old deer, had decided to join the cuddlefest, something had gone very wrong.

 

            Claire risked a glance up. Davy and Lorraine were both sitting on the other side of the table, looking paralysed with awkwardness. Davy poured two more Bloody Marys with hands that had only just started to shake, for reasons unrelated to the alcohol, and pushed one wordlessly towards Claire before looking hard at Lorraine. “Down it, spook.”

 

            “’S your drink,” Lorraine said mildly.

 

            “I meant your wine. None of is us – us ish – we’re not drink enough, okay.”

 

            “Spook,” Claire repeated. It cost her something to get the words out intact. “ _Spy_.”

 

            “I do a lot of paperwork,” Lorraine said. “I take calls. I work for Lester. Have I mentioned how glad I am he’s not here?”

 

            Lorraine had not said that many words in a row since she’d introduced herself, and Claire considered that a giveaway. Claire thought hard about this for a few moments, then gave up, because her head was swimming. “Right. Enough. Stephen, darling, sit down. Cara, sweetie, I love you but you’re married.”

 

            “Darren wouldn’t mind. He’d want to watch,” Cara said, grey eyes sparkling, rose-pink lips curved into a mischievous smile.

 

            Claire winced. “No, Cara. Really. No.”

 

            “I know. Was a joke.” Cara kissed the top of Claire’s head like a sister might, then slithered off her lap onto the floor.

 

            “Second point,” Claire said, remembering far too late that Cara became octopus-like in her cuddliness when drunk. She pointed an accusatory finger at Davy. “You, sailor girl, can stop barracking me for my drinking, ’cause you are just as drunk.”

 

             Davy nodded equably, throwing back her Bloody Mary with gay abandon. Lorraine womanhandled Cara back onto her chair, then sipped daintily at her wine.

 

            “Third point.” Claire let her hand drop and looked hard at Lorraine. “You’re a spy. You are. You are a _spy_.”

 

            “Davy’s mistaken,” Lorraine answered, voice bland as ever. God, she was far too sober, and Claire was far too drunk. And yet not drunk enough, because Dave was still at the back of her mind. “I’ve never been that interesting. I’m admin staff, that’s all.”

 

            Stephen snorted and beer came out of his nose. Cara gave the obligatory cry of disgust and swiped him, and Lorraine wrinkled her nose. “Please,” Stephen said, after a couple of false starts. “You keep the place running.”

 

            Lorraine’s eyebrows flickered sceptically, and she looked down into her drink.

 

            “But you have connections,” Claire persisted. “You know stuff.”

 

            “No,” Lorraine said quietly, then hesitated. “And I could try to find it out, but I’d rather not.”

 

            Davy, who suddenly looked a lot more sober than she had done five minutes ago, sat back in her chair and slouched like a louche warrior goddess, head tilted back, watching Lorraine from half-lowered lids. “Knowing… too much?”

 

            Claire attempted to parse this. A solution didn’t leap to mind, so she had another drink instead.

 

            Lorraine nodded. “I don’t want to know. He’ll come back to me. He will.”

 

            _Dead or alive_ , Claire thought. It felt like the kind of thought that couldn’t be drowned with more vodka, and as she glanced around the kitchen she knew everyone was thinking it.

 

            “What would you do if he came back and he didn’t come back to you?” Davy said, sitting forward again. “This, this is what I just don’t get because Lorraine he is so crazy and you are so _not_. How do you know what the hell he’ll do next?”

 

            Lorraine said nothing.

 

            “How do you talk to someone who pulls a knife before he even says hello?” Davy waved her drink around.

 

            Claire found herself in wholehearted agreement.

 

            “I’m not unreason. Reasonabibble? But he’s just...” Davy waved her drink around some more, and yet did not spill a drop. They clearly didn’t teach them to be wasteful in the navy.

 

            “He matters to me,” Lorraine said very softly. “And if he doesn’t choose to come back to me, he doesn’t choose to come back to me.”

 

            A horrible silence fell, and Claire had an equally horrible presentiment that she’d just been given a tiny little window onto Lorraine’s personal weaknesses. She really hoped she wasn’t going to remember this in the morning. She preferred Lorraine quiet and invincible, the Lorraine who could stop Blade in his tracks and make him smile sheepishly and put away the knives with nothing more than a look.

 

            Stephen was frowning. “But. You. What about you. He’d break your heart if he went and did that. He wouldn’t.”

 

            “Would he?” Davy said, sounding faintly panicky.

 

            “No,” Claire said, “no, he’s not – look, he’s a nutcase but he’s actually quite bright, he wouldn’t, he’s – Lorraine, I – you – what happens to you in all this? Don’t you care?”

 

            “I get my heart broken?” Lorraine looked a little puzzled, but shutters had come down behind her eyes. “I chalk it up to experience? I move on?”

 

            One of Cara’s slender artist hands settled over Lorraine’s wrist. (Strong wrists, Claire suddenly noticed, and when Lorraine turned her hand over she glimpsed calluses. Admin staff, indeed.) “Lorraine,” Cara said very gently. “Lorraine, you don’t think we’re going to swallow that.”   

 

            “You believed Davy when she called me a spy,” Lorraine pointed out, and drew her hand away.

 

            Cara looked tremendously upset. “Please don’t be angry!”

 

            “I’m not angry. I’m not.” Lorraine patted Cara’s hand. “But look. So long as Niall is happy, I don’t care what happens to me.”

 

            “And so long as you’re happy, he doesn’t care what happens to him.” Stephen looked rather sick. Claire squinted at him and reached for the bucket under the kitchen sink. “He’s my friend, you know, I… know stuff about him… kind of…”

 

            “Mutually assured destruction,” Davy said faintly, with perfect diction. She looked horrified, not sick.

 

            Lorraine blinked at her owlishly. “Well, hopefully not.”

 

            Davy sat back, blinked a lot, and then rewound the conversation about ten hideous minutes by saying: “But I don’t understand the talking thing.”

 

            “No, neither does Niall,” Lorraine said. “And neither do I. We don’t have to talk to make ourselves understood.”

 

            There was a short silence. Davy mouthed ‘ick’, Stephen smirked, and Claire remembered the one and only time she’d seen Blade touch Lorraine for more than a split second. Neither of them had realised she was there, and they hadn’t even kissed; Blade had just slid silently into Lorraine’s orbit and she’d turned, looking up at him as he leant into her personal space and touched her cheek gently. The moment was exceptionally brief and quiet, but Claire felt dirty for having been there without their knowledge, like the worst kind of intruder. She waved off her thoughts and stuffed the bucket under Stephen’s nose.

 

            “That makes sense,” Cara said, looking off into the distance and wearing her Serious Photographer expression. “I’ve seen you move around each other. I’d like to photograph you, actually. If I could catch you off guard.”

 

            “Good luck,” Stephen said, beating Claire’s ministrations off with one large but inaccurate hand. “Claire, can you _not_?”

 

            Claire put the bucket from under the kitchen sink down. “Thought you might be sick.”

 

            “I haven’t had that much,” Stephen objected.

 

            “You’re as drunk as Cara and she’s half your size.” Claire sighed. “Can I just. Guys. Let’s face it.”

 

            “Face what?” Lorraine said, after a suitable pause, and Claire realised she hadn’t finished her sentence.

 

            “We are all nuts,” Claire said magisterially, “for getting involved with them. We are all uniquely, awfully, horribly crazy. Lorraine is not specially crazy just because Blade is mad for knives.”

 

            Stephen nodded. “I mean, Davy, have you ever seen Finn around a rifle?”

 

            “Yeah.” An indulgent smile crossed Davy’s face. “It’s cute.”

 

            “Moving on,” Claire said, too drunk to be appalled but getting there anyway. “We love the bastards anyway, yes? Nod. _Everybody nod_.”

 

            Everybody immediately nodded. Claire was pleased to see her controlling-year-7s voice still worked. “So, here and now, let us make a pact to not tease each other for being crazy about crazy men, because we are all crazy and they are all crazy. Yes? Nod.”

 

            “Got lost in among the crazies,” Stephen mourned.

 

            “Just nod, pet,” Claire said forgivingly.

 

            Stephen nodded.

 

            “Teacher’s pet,” Davy muttered.

 

            “No, that’s Ditzy,” Lorraine said in answer.

 

            Claire could tell who were the troublemakers in this classroom. “No teasing. We’re all mad here.”

 

            More nodding.

 

            “And now,” Claire said, proceeding with dignity, “let us all drink a glass of water and go to bed. If you forgot where your sleeping bag is, sleep on the floor. The paracetamol is by the kitchen sink.”

 

***

 

            Claire woke the next day with a monstrous hangover and staggered downstairs. Cara was snuggled up in a nest of blankets, and Stephen was asleep face down on a sofa. She poked him to make sure he was still alive. Lorraine was still tidily asleep in the spare bedroom, she’d checked.

 

            She found Davy in the kitchen, reading a page of closely written A4 in clear handwriting.

 

            “It’s Lorraine’s,” Davy said without prompting. “It’s a contract.”

 

            Claire snatched it and read it. It began with ‘We the undersigned’ and ended with ‘because we are all of equally unsound mind in participating in intimate relationships with the aforementioned persons’. It was dated that morning, at 04:37 precisely, and signed in Lorraine’s hand. Davy took it back and signed it as well.

 

            “May as well,” she said, and passed it back to Claire, who shrugged and signed it too then went to get painkillers.

 

            By the end of the day, they’d all signed it. Inspired by an evil impulse, Claire collected Lizzie’s signature the next time she saw her, and posted it to Lorraine with no explanatory note; three days later it was back in her hands, with James Lester’s signature on it and an unmarked compliments slip. Claire had to sit down and wheeze a bit, she laughed so hard.

 

            Claire had it framed, and hung it in the kitchen.


End file.
